


Salt and Sugar

by TwinKats



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Brainwashing, Canon Typical Everything, Dad!Reaper, Dealing with Emotions, F/F, Gen, M/M, More characters to be added, Multi, Psuedoscience, Slow Updates, Swearing, Unethical Science, ana is an asshole, ana is kind of team mom, bad hearing loss jack, but still rather horrible!gabe, dad!76, fun with the chronal accelerator, future science, gabriel really needs some help, hopefully future reaper76, jack suffers a lot after the swiss hq, maybe not as bad as you think!gabe, mostly blind jack, no one is ok really, old soldiers, past reaper76, questionable methods, questionable morals, references to sep days, salty old bastards, sombra and jesse, sombra's giant conspiracy, sort of enemies to siblings, stealing to survive, stuck together, talon brainwashing, teasing jack, trying to write bilingual characters accurately
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-08 07:54:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11077287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinKats/pseuds/TwinKats
Summary: Winston really should've performed a routine check on Tracer's chronal accelerator. Maybe then this wouldn't have happened.





	1. Chapter 1

Reaper crouched low behind the crumbling wall with a huffed growl. He tightened his grip onto his guns and glanced out from the cover, only to jerk back in time to dodge a shot from Jack’s pulse riffle.

“Tell me you’ve gotten the data, Sombra,” Reaper snarled behind gritted teeth. He debated the chance to slip into smoke and shadow, to swarm Jack like a wraith until the man chocked on him, on the black that made up Reaper; made up all that he was now. Behind his mask Reaper tracked to Widow nestled onto a rooftop where she worked to keep both Oxten and McCree busy and off of his back since Jack seemed so dead focused on him. He couldn’t tell where Sombra was, didn’t even need to really because what worth was hunting down the girl unless she _wanted_ to be seen?

“Hold your horses, _papi_ , I’m working on it,” Sombra snarked back.

Reaper snarled to himself a slew of curses and peeked out behind his cover again. He jerked back and growled when the shot grazed at the sides of his mask. Smoke wafted out from under it and curled alongside his fingers and ankles at the sudden rush of _rage_.

“Well hurry up,” Reaper growled. “Widow can’t hold off Oxten and McCree for too long and _Jack’s_ getting a little too close for comfort here.”

“Well why don’t you just take care of him then?”

“If I had the _time_ , _mija_ ,” Reaper huffed. He wanted to _enjoy_ his discussion with Jack, not waste it on some sort of mess for Talon like this.

Sombra snorted. “ _Dios mío_ just kiss him and make up already,” she mumbled.

“ _Sombra_.”

Sombra mumbled something back in Spanish and Reaper fought down the urge to just wraith himself to her location and shove soap down her mouth. Obviously the girl hung around seasoned killers far too often given the state of her mouth. The irony did not escape Reaper at all, and he shifted to peer out again and try to track Jack when Sombra cheered.

“Got it!” she yelled over the connection and Reaper sighed. He could faintly hear Widow mutter something in French that neither of them could make out as he started to let himself lose shape.

“Meet up at the extraction point,” Reaper commanded.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sombra yawned. “You think they’ll let us get in some proper down time after all of this?”

Reaper rolled his eyes, already most incorporeal as he shifted, near ready to fling himself across the battlefield. He didn’t bother to give Sombra a reply. There was a loud explosion as he started to move and a high pitched whine that crossed over his earbud. Reaper quite suddenly slammed back into corporeality.

“Sombra?!” Reaper jerked his head in the direction of the approximation of the explosion, but all he got on the other end of the radio was cursing. “Sombra!”

“What in the hell is _that_?” Sombra wheezed. “Gabe, _look at Amélie!_ ”

Reaper jerked his head back to where Widow tangled with McCree and Oxten and paled. He climbed to his feet, already on the move to shift to Widows side, when the wine of Jack’s pulse riffle against his lower back stopped him cold.

“Don’t even think about it,” Jack growled. The air began to spark with electricity and a sudden second explosion drew the man’s attention. Even then Reaper found himself frozen still with the gun against his back. He could tell when Jack saw just what he saw when the barrel of the weapon slipped back a little. He watched the man suck in a sharp breath, then together they moved forward. Jack yelled out, “LENA!” as Reaper dropped into shadow and mist and flung himself up to Widow.

Jack jumped, scrambled, and climbed up to the rooftop and over to McCree, hands raised up against the sudden veritable vortex that seemed to be bursting out of Oxten’s chest. Somehow, despite the fact that they very well should have been able to hear the noise on the ground, no one could hear her screaming until they reached the rooftop. Reaper glanced and saw McCree inching towards Oxten, hands also held up. He couldn’t hear what the boy was saying. Instead he focused on Widow.

The second explosion that rocked the rooftop had knocked Widow promptly unconscious. Reaper reached her side just as Sombra did, the Mexican woman knelt next to Widow with her gloved hand alight and screens built out of nanites rocketed under her fingertips. It took only a glance from Reaper to see that Sombra hacked into the few nanites in Widow’s system that were constantly monitored by Talon. He wondered if they were even aware that the girl could slip into those cracks and happily did so, then decided that it honestly didn’t matter.

“ _Lena!_ ” Jack roared and Reaper glanced over to them, noticed the way that the pulsing vortex from Oxten’s chest beat faster. The sense of impending doom ratcheted up.

“What do we do, Reaper?” Sombra asked, and Reaper shifted back to see her blue eyes wide. He didn’t doubt that Sombra could feel the itch along her skin just like Reaper could feel it through his whole body. There wasn’t much of a chance, not with the increased frequency of pulses, to get away. Still Reaper reached down and pulled Widow up. His lower half already twisted into smoke for faster movement and a tendril snapped out to grab Sombra who yelped in surprise.

“We need to move,” Reaper growled. “ _Now_.” If they wanted to survive whatever was to come their way from whatever happened to the chronal accelerator that Winston built for Oxten then they needed to move.

Sombra twisted to her feet but didn’t bother to get out of the shadowed grip Reaper held on her arm, aware that if push came to shove he could move much faster than she could and that grip might just save her life. Before they could race off however the vortex reached a critical point and the world exploded into a wash of color, static, high winds, and arcs of electricity. Oxten’s screaming reached a fever pitch, twisted into the high whine of an electrical charge, and then silence burst around them until their ears rang.

Reaper pulled Sombra close, the explosion rocketed him and the two girls he gripped tightly. He wrapped himself as best he could around them, shielded them from flying debris in a vacuum of sound. He could see Jack faintly being tossed aside like a ragdoll, McCree in his grasp, before sound exploded back around them. Oxten’s screaming cut in and then cut off sharply and Reaper felt himself collide into the rough trunk of a tree which snapped from the force. He slammed into a second and collapsed down to the ground, groaning, Widow still unconscious and Sombra awake, although given the way she trembled slightly probably shaken.

Carefully Reaper let go of his tight grip on the two girls. He let Widow slip to the ground and Sombra pushed herself up beside Reaper who leaned against the tree and wheezed.

“Gabe?” Sombra questioned.

“Ribs,” Reaper grunted and let his eyes slip shut and focused on his other senses. He didn’t bother to correct Sombra on her use of his name, there wasn’t much point in it right now anyway as correcting the girl would only be a waste of air. Plus, with his injury and the fact that they didn’t have any healers between the three of them, and how Reaper honestly didn’t feel like hunting down something to ease the ache right now either, it was just better to focus instead of argue.

The only other options available to Reaper for sources of healing of course were to kill one of the two Overwatch fools with his shotguns, but Reaper decided to ignore that. He just breathed out heavily and attempted to ignore the burn along his chest, or the way his sides flaked off into mist at regular intervals. Sombra licked her lips and looked a bit worried at Reaper, at his silence, and then glanced around the trees that surrounded them.

“ _¡Nombre!_ ” she breathed out, and one hand grasped at Reaper much to the older man’s consternation. “ _¿Donde estamos?_ ” She couldn’t immediately see Oxten, McCree, or Jack but that didn’t mean that the two Overwatch members and Jack weren’t in the obvious forest with them. Sombra glanced to Reaper and rapidly questioned in Spanish, “ _Did you know she could do this?_ ”

“ _No,_ ” Reaper growled, and opened his eyes again. He’d already figured what most probably happened—at least in regards to their sudden shift in location. More then likely the damn monkey figured once he’d created the chronal accelerator he didn’t need to keep a close on eye it, like everything _else_ Overwatch ended up inventing somewhere down the line.

Sombra carefully got to her feet, her gun forming into her hand with a twitch of her fingers and a small thought to the nanites that she could control with her whims. With Reaper wounded, Widow out, that left Sombra as the main line of defense and she didn’t like it when there wasn’t something for her to hack easily enough nearby. Reaper wheezed again faintly and Sombra bit her lip. She debated giving it all up; asking Overwatch to help them, at least given the situation. They could happily go back to blowing each other up after they were out of the forest and healed up for all Sombra cared.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Reaper snarled. Sombra sighed, canted her hip, and rolled his eyes.

“ _Spoilsport_ ,” she said back and then stiffened straight when she felt the telltale sign of electronics ping on the edge of her senses. Reaper heard someone stumble about and with a twist of ink and shadows held one shotgun up and at the ready. Jack fumbled into the broken tree, stared at the three Talon agents, and shook his head.

“Great. You’re here as well,” he sighed, pressed a hand heavily against the trunk beside the one Reaper crashed through, and waved his hand back toward the direction he came from. “Over here!”

Reaper moved to get to his feet, snarling, hissing, and spitting under his breath because obviously Jack planned to call over the two Overwatch agents and to hell if he would let himself be shot down like a mad dog. Sombra reached out and grasped him by the arm, form tense and shifted to be in front of Widow who still hadn’t woken. Reaper worried for a moment that the girl suffered from some sort of concussion. She did smack pretty hard into the roof, and he _thought_ he saw her headpiece cracked.

“Easy,” Jack sighed. “We’re in no condition to fight either.”

Sombra relaxed a bit, and Reaper wanted to snap at her to not _listen to this pandejo_ dammit, but he kept his words to himself. He bit them down with a wheeze and a glare at Jack and instead spat out a grumbled, “Fucking _Overwatch_.”

McCree and Oxten stumbled over next. Oxten, Reaper noted, looked pale and shaky. The chronal accelerator at her chest wasn’t _off_ , but it was dim and flickered and the color itself seemed to be several shades _wrong_. For a moment Reaper wished he’d gone into science, maybe he could figure a way to stop the damn thing from blowing them all up since the idiotic monkey never bothered to work on his own invention after _making_ it, and then he shoved those thoughts under the rug. Honestly he much preferred to kill things than stare at a computer screen all day anyway.

McCree, though, Reaper noted how the boy stood stiff. He watched how the kid glanced between Jack and himself, wary, untrusting. Reaper wanted to huff. This had been the first mission either had run into each other on the field, and while Reaper could admit the kid had grown rather well from his days at Blackwatch he did feel _some_ disappointment. He could already name over a dozen ways the whole firefight could’ve gone in McCree’s direction a whole lot better if he’d did this or that right.

Finally McCree sighed explosively. He slumped down and scrubbed a hand over the hair on his face and put his gaze squarely onto Reaper.

“Fuck this is one helluva mighty mess ya’ve gotten us all inta,” McCree glanced to Oxten, and then shook his head. “Also pretty sure ghosts’r supposed t’ _stay dead_.”

“And buried,” Reaper drawled. “McCree.”

“Reyes,” McCree said back, lips pressed thin. Oxten glanced over to Reaper with wide eyes, and the pale pallor to her skin seemed to get worse.

“Great, wonderful, family reunion done and over with,” Jack pushed himself up, “do any of you know where we are?”

Sombra rolled her eyes, put her gun away, and turned. Reaper and Jack could hear the muttered Spanish easily enough although both deigned to ignore it.

“I don’t know, _Jack,_ ” Reaper chose to say instead. “Why don’t you ask your little _science experiment?_ ”

“Hey!” Oxten protested weakly, swayed, and McCree reached out to steady her.

“That’s uncalled fer,” McCree uttered with narrowed eyes.

Jack shifted forward, as if to defend Oxten as well, and Reaper rolled his eyes. Typical boy scout. He shifted a bit himself, an attempt to mostly relieve some of the pressure on his ribs. Reaper debated something else to say to Jack, or maybe to the two members of Overwatch in front of him. It wasn’t often that he could dig into them with some hard discovered truths and _not_ get shot for it. In the end Reaper decided to keep his mouth shut and just focus on staying in one shape.

Reaper didn’t miss the way Jack cocked his head in his direction at his silence. He didn’t miss the way Jack looked him up and down as he leaned against the tree, or the way Jack’s visor seemed to focus on his chest. The old bastard knew him well enough that Reaper didn’t even need to wonder what the man might be thinking about. He turned his head to the side and resolved not to think about Jack, his Overwatch not-kids, or the fact that they weren’t attempting to kill each other. If Talon even _knew_ ….Reaper sighed explosively.

“Sombra?” he questioned.

“ _Un momento, papi_ ,” Sombra mumbled. Reaper doubted she even realized she slipped _papi_ into that sentence given the lack of burning sarcasm.

Jack shifted. “What is she doing?”

“Finding a satellite and getting a GPS location, _if you would shut up_ ,” Sombra growled. Her fingers moved as if typing on some sort of keyboard and her eyes almost glowed purple from the data that she had streaming directly across her iris instead of in a nanite created screen.

Reaper shifted, stood up a bit straighter even though it _hurt_ and ghosted a bit closer to Sombra out of worry. Jack picked up on it, obviously, as did McCree.

“What is it?” McCree questioned. He shifted Oxten’s position against his side so that he could reach for his measly six shooter easier.

“It shouldn’t be this hard for her to find a satellite, should it,” Jack said. He kept his voice low, loud enough for Reaper and McCree to hear him at the least.

“No,” Reaper growled, and something felt lodged into his throat. Just _where_ had Oxten taken them?

“ _Hah!_ ” Sombra jumped and did a little dance. “Got it.” She flicked her fingers and screens popped up around them with a map and a small blinking dot. Her eyes were already back to their regular blue. “We’re in, hm, New York?” she cocked her hip and blinked curiously.

“Obviously,” Reaper grumbled and drifted forward. He glanced at the information Sombra grabbed and scowled beneath his mask when he caught the date. “Sombra…”

“What?” Sombra asked, her tone a bit testy.

“Is this data all correct?” Reaper glanced over to her. She’d knelt over Widow after dropping the screens up for them to peruse.

“Of course, what do you expect?” she waved her hand and focused on the information she could glean about Widow’s condition.

Jack shifted up next to Reaper and nudged him with his shoulder. “What do you see, Gabe.”

Reaper snapped his head over to Jack, then grit his teeth and motioned toward the screen. “The _date_.” Jack glanced at the date and then leaned in closer in surprise when he saw what Reaper saw.

“That’s….”

“Oh it’s not just the date,” Sombra pipped up. She kept everything utterly chipper, but Reaper could _hear_ the tenseness. “It’s _everything._ ” The whole group looked to Sombra now as she explained. “See I tried to grab a Talon satellite first—they’re _everywhere_ —but nothing. So I went with Overwatch—they’re everywhere too—again nothing. So I expanded my search beyond to every conceivable option and still—nothing. Nothing that I recognized. So finally I grabbed a stray satellite nearby—Stark something or other—and pulled the data from that. Do you know what I found?”

Sombra hummed at what she could see in Widow’s nanites and dismissed the data before she turned around and smiled at the group.

“No Omnics,” Sombra said lightly. “We’re not anywhere near where we should be. Or when we should be. Fairly certain there never was a group called the ‘Avengers’ either.” Her smile turned wicked, almost nasty. “Congratulations Lena, I can call you Lena right? You just pulled us into a _different world._ ”

Reaper stared at Sombra, then at the screens that she provided with the information she just casually dropped on the group. He raised one hand to his mask and growled between grit teeth. His body wavered in response to the sudden burst of _rage_ and then stilled when he just felt tired.

“I’m going to _kill_ that monkey,” Reaper snarled.

“I’m beginning to understand the sentiment,” Jack grumbled.

* * *

Widow did not wake, and while at first that bothered Reaper much like an itch, the way Sombra continuously moved to check on the woman brought her continued state of unconsciousness into light. Whatever the hacker’s reason to keep Widow unconscious, Reaper didn’t doubt that it had something to do with the fact that neither wanted to risk a fight in their less than stellar states. Reaper was perfectly content in letting Widow further sleep if it meant not having to worry at this moment about the woman Amélie Lacroix became.

Reaper didn’t like to admit it but he had no idea how long Amélie worked for Talon; he had no idea as to her general state aside from the pervading apathy she showed unless in the thrill of the hunt. Reaper couldn’t say one way or the other if Amélie killed Gérard and mourned him, or if Gérard was killed because of Amélie, or if whoever killed Gérard and took Amélie turned her into this. He didn’t know if Talon had their fingers in Overwatch’s pie back when Amélie disappeared the first or second time, or if their attention to the fallen peacekeepers was more recent as of Reaper’s addition to their ranks.

The lack of knowledge rankled Reaper, he would admit, and he could tell it bothered Sombra something fierce too. Reaper might’ve lived off intelligence, but Sombra positively _thrived_ from it. The fact that the girl didn’t have the information when she seemingly had everything _else_ worried him. The part of him that was still Gabriel Reyes pulled alarm bells, screamed in the back of his mind that this meant something _else_ positively existed in the shadows. Something _else_ tugged at their strings.

It reminded Gabriel, and Reaper too, of everything that lead up to the fall of Overwatch. The bitterness of it pooled into his throat like bile. Oftentimes it wanted to consume him as much as the ever pervading rage did, wanted to envelope him and take him over into something further beyond Reaper, beyond Gabriel, and _that_ he refused. Long ago Reaper admitted to himself that he’d always been this fucked up mess; the anger and the hatred coiled within him and took him over. He once considered it to be an extent of how much SEP fucked him over, but after _dying_ , after being _resurrected_ in the way that he had, Reaper could admit he’d been this cloud of seething hatred for far longer than SEP.

SEP merely gave Reaper an outlet.

Against the wall, by the window, and nestled comfortably in the shadows Reaper glanced over toward Widow on the bed where she rested calmly. Sombra sat next to her, small screens in front of her, Widow’s head in her lap, and her free hand coming through the other woman’s hair. He didn’t question what Sombra worked on, he had no doubt it had to do with something with Talon and Widow herself. His gaze behind the mask slipped over to Jack who sat in a chair and seemed to be half-falling asleep given the way he’d jerk his head back from where it rested on his palm.

Oxten and McCree were curled up together on another bed, completely asleep. They’d only landed in the small forest in New York just a few hours earlier, but the work it took to even get their group to function together, and then find a place to hole up in while they figured out what to do next, took a lot out of everyone. Reaper glanced back to Jack and watched, and waited, half-smoke and half-person in the shadows. He drifted his gaze back to Sombra when the man still twitched himself back awake and sighed breathily out of his mask.

Reaper noted the way Sombra’s lips moved, how she seemed to be almost singing something softly to Widow. Faintly he could catch a few Spanish words here and there. Some sort of lullaby from what little he could pick up. Soothing in its cadence at the least. He wondered if she sang it for Widow, or for herself. His gaze drifted back over to Jack, finally slumped down, not-quite-yet snoring. Reaper waited until the breath picked up from Jack’s mask, a soft snore with the tinny quality that came from the electronics set to pick up and project his voice clearly.

When Jack’s snores reached upwards and over a minute did Reaper ease himself up from his own chair. Already he felt himself drifting off into smoke and towards the slightly cracked window. He glanced to Sombra.

“Contact me if he wakes,” Reaper rasped. Sombra waved her fingers and gave him a sly smile in response as he fully shifted to smoke and slipped from the room. The burning edge of _hunger_ ever since he smashed into the tree, overtook the rest of his thought process. For now Reaper needed to feed; perhaps one, maybe two, would do until they had to move. Given that he had no knowledge about this place—this _world_ —Reaper knew he couldn’t draw any sort of undue attention to himself or his activities.

He ghosted through the streets and ally’s and searched for someone, _anyone_ , that would be suitable for his needs. Homeless, criminal, random bystander it didn’t matter. Even a _rat_ would do at this rate, although Reaper much preferred something with a bit more sense of self than a mere rat. Eventually, just a few blocks from the hotel, Reaper came across something _lively_ on his senses. He didn’t know what or who it was—homeless, criminal, random passerby—but all they were pinged as _meat_. Like a swarm Reaper ducked, dove, and wrapped himself around the person.

Black mist and claws clung tight to the human form beneath him. He rode out the high of sudden _life_ beneath his fingers, the feel of a pulse with a breathy sigh. He didn’t fully form; he let his hands and his face come close, breath in the sickly sweet of that which he lacked, he let himself dive into and around the creature that he’d grabbed. He felt them _choke_ on the smoke that made up most of what he was now. He could feel the energy slip back into him, their life, their _soul_ for lack of any better term. When he let them go they dropped to the ground a withered husk.

Reaper stared dispassionately down at the body. Normally he’d ghost along, seek out another source of food after his first meal when he _hungered_ like this. Normally he’d leave the meat behind for someone else to clean up. Now he hesitated. There was no Talon here to sweep random deaths under the rug.

_“Oh? Gabe?”_

Reaper huffed a growl. “I thought I told you not to call me that, _Sombra_.”

_“Sorry, sorry. Just wanted to remind you to clean up after yourself, **papi**. We don’t want to draw any attention.”_

Reaper snarled, “I know.” He figured that much already, but then the girl just liked to get on his nerves.

 _“Well that was all!”_ Sombra cheered sweetly and Reaper rolled his eyes.

Clean up after himself; Reaper scowled. At least he wasn’t a _messy_ eater or that could make cleaning after his kills so much worse. He sighed, dragged the body up, and debated what to do with it. Fire cleaned away most evidence easily enough. Acid did well too, but he didn’t have any chance to get a hold of any acid right now. Fire would have to do. His training over the days at SEP and in the military taught him plenty on how to rig a fire together with minimal materials. Soon enough Reaper drifted lazily back to the hotel, and up into the room. He left behind a merrily burning corpse.

“Better?” Sombra questioned lightly. She didn’t glance up when Reaper settled himself back into his chair.

“Much,” Reaper breathed and let himself relax. Just the one was enough for now. His ribs no longer _ached_ and while most of everything else of him hurt, he didn’t feel the burning urge to feed any more. He glanced over to where Jack surprisingly kept snoring away and shook his head. Only Jack would rest so soundly among his enemies. With a slight yawn Reaper kicked his feet up onto the edge of the bed that Sombra laid on. She stared at his feet, and then up at him, and rolled her eyes.

“Honestly,” she mumbled, slipped off into Spanish which left Reaper chuckling lightly. She watched him settle down into his own form of sleep, comforted by the fact that at least Overwatch and Jack didn’t appear to be a threat for the time being. If they _were_ a threat Reaper would wake up easily enough anyway.

When Reaper finally settled into soft snores Sombra slipped out of the bed. She grabbed a pillow and quietly made her way around to Reaper’s side. With gentle care so as not to wake the man she tugged off his mask, and then tugged his hood down, and stuffed the pillow behind his neck. Reaper didn’t even respond except to roll his head further into the pillow with a tired grunt, a sign that he really was out of it like a light. Sombra shook her head, carefully made her way over to the second bed and grabbed another pillow from there. Just as carefully, more-so actually since she didn’t know Jack Morrison like she knew Gabriel Reyes, Sombra tugged off the Soldier’s mask and visor. She shifted the man back so that he leaned against the wall and not his hand, and stuffed the pillow behind his head. Then Sombra stepped back and tugged her fingers apart like blowing up a photo. When she finally had the whole room in view, she stepped back, smiled, and tapped a finger against the nanite created screen.

“ _Boop_ ,” Somba said lightly. She snapped the screen closed, filed the photo away, and climbed back into the bed with Widow without a further word. All her desired programs would run throughout the rest of the night anyway, and anything she absolutely needed to see would alert her quickly enough in a silent ping across her senses from where her nanites directly interfaced with her. Sombra let out a yawn of exhaustion drifted off into sleep. She couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow would bring.

* * *

When Jesse woke up the next morning it was to find himself wrapped around Lena much to his consternation. He carefully pulled himself back, resolved to apologize to her about it later, and slipped out of the bed. He wasn’t the first to wake up, given that Sombra stepped right into his space and waved cheerfully at him while he rubbed his eyes. By the grace of being surprised by Genji so often all those years ago in Blackwatch Jesse _didn’t_ scream.

“What do ya want,” Jesse drawled instead. He reached over and grabbed his hat from the nightstand with a tired sigh. Part of him dearly hoped yesterday had been a dream, while part of him prayed it hadn’t. Being able to see Gabriel again, _knowing_ the man was alive even if he was an enemy, eased some of the guilt Jesse felt over fleeing Blackwatch all those years ago.

“I figured you and I could take a trip out to get some cash,” Sombra said in a whisper, “and maybe some food for these grumps when they wake up. What do you say, _cowboy?_ ”

Jesse eyed her up and down, sighed, and nodded.

“Food sounds good, and we need some cash,” he mumbled. Out of everyone bar Talon and possibly Morrison Jesse could understand the necessity of stealing to get by—and he had no doubt that’s what he and Sombra would be doing. “How’re we doin’ this, darlin’?”

Sombra waved her hand and gave him a sly smile. “Oh, you’ll see,” she laughed. “Just…follow my directions.”

Jesse scrubbed a hand across his face and nodded slowly. “Sure thing,” he sighed.

“Oh, and ditch the armor, the chaps, and your weapons,” Sombra said cheerfully. “We don’t want to make a scene, right?”

Jesse eyed her as he carefully removed the armor from his chest. It wasn’t comfortable to sleep in anyway, and he’d probably snag the bathroom once he and Sombra got back to soak his sore muscles.

“An’ what about yerself?” Jesse drawled cautiously.

Sombra smiled at him as he carefully and cautiously did as she asked. “Oh,” she laughed lightly. “I have my ways.” With a wave of her hand, once Jesse’d follow through with her instructions, she completely vanished from sight. Jesse cursed, surprised, but then her voice came over his earbud and he jolted.

_“Don’t worry, cowboy, I haven’t disappeared.”_

“Coulda fooled me,” Jesse grit his teeth.

_“Oh hush. Now make sure to hide that wonderful arm of yours under your serape, and do **exactly** as I say. _ _¿Comprendes?”_

“Sí,” Jesse grumbled. He grabbed the keycard for the hotel room, hunched his shoulders under his serape and stuffed his metal arm into a pocket as he strode out of the room, hat pressed low onto his head. Jesse walked like some tired old man out of an old western, and occasionally he swore he could hear Sombra giggling off in the background.

 _“Turn here,”_ Sombra said, and Jesse turned down the street. He started left, and she made a buzzer sound and Jesse rolled his eyes and turned right instead.

“Honestly, could ya _be_ anymore childish?” Jesse grumbled to himself.

 _“_ _¡Sí!”_ Sombra giggled.

Jesse _did not pout_ at her response. He kept his head low instead and decided not to respond. At her next set of directions he paused, and waited. When Sombra realized that Jesse had no intention to move without a specified direction she sighed tiredly.

 _“_ _¡Dios mío, manito!”_ Sombra groaned. _“Fine. Left.”_

Jesse smirked from under his hat and turned left. _“Gracias,_ ” Jesse chuckled.

Sombra waited for him to get a block before she giggled. _“Oops. I lied. It was to the right.”_

Jesse froze stiff, cursed, “ _¡Vete a la chingada!”_ and turned around. He actually stomped and Sombra burst into peals of laughter at the childish action.

 _“I think I’ll keep you,”_ Sombra cackled. _“I won’t even tell **papi** about your language.”_

Jesse ground his teeth together and resigned himself to having to deal with Sombra for the time being. For a moment he wondered if _might_ have been karmic payback. Eventually Jesse decided that karmic payback or not _no one_ deserved to deal with someone as frustrating as Sombra whispering in their ear. He vowed to get her back, somehow, even if he had to out stubborn the damned woman.

Between the amount of time Jesse and Sombra took to bicker back and forth between each other, and Jesse actually following Sombra’s direction, the sun already rose high up into the sky. When Jesse came to a stop outside of an ATM machine—ancient, easily broken into technology that made Jesse grimace—Sombra cheerfully let him know they reached their destination.

“K,” Jesse mumbled, more careful now that people started to populate the streets. “Now what?”

 _“Mime putting a card it,”_ Sombra directed softly. Jesse rolled his eyes—the motion of putting a card in was probably unnecessary, but he humored Sombra nonetheless. _“Now for the pin…”_

“Which is…?” Jesse drawled. Sombra rattled off four numbers and he quickly punched them in, and then calmly selected withdraw and then frowned at the numbers there. “What in the…” There was _no way_ something like four hundred dollars would be anywhere near useful. “Sombra?”

_“Don’t worry about it. Withdraw four hundred.”_

Jesse frowned, but carefully punched in to withdraw four hundred and took the cash without any other word.

“Now what?” Jesse asked as he quickly ended the transaction. He felt Sombra wrap her arms around his neck as she giggled.

_“Food!_ _¡Vámanos!”_

Jesse grunted when he felt Sombra wrap her legs around his waist next and settle herself onto his back.

“What’m I, a horse?” he growled, but moved onward nonetheless. Food sounded mighty good right now anyway, even if he doubted a measly four hundred dollars could feed all six of them.

* * *

Jack woke up with a faint groan and a roll of his head against the pillow. He blinked slowly in surprise and squinted. In front of him was _someone_ , but he couldn’t quite tell who. The colors blurred together into a mess of something brown or something yellow, and something _glowing_. Lena, then, Jack determined.

“Shh!” Lena shifted forward and some part of her moved—her hand? Probably—in response to his rasped question. “Apparently Reaper’s completely asleep,” she said softly. Jack could practically _hear_ her vibrating with mischief as he turned his head toward what he thought was the mass of black in the opposite corner. He couldn’t be sure. “You know, he doesn’t look so menacing without his mask on.”

Jack’s head snapped straight back toward Lena at her gentle musing. _Gabriel, without the mask?_ Ever since the man donned the name of ‘Reaper’ he’d worn the blasted thing. Jack hadn’t had the chance to see how the destruction of the Swiss HQ touched upon Gabriel aside from the new twist in his capabilities. That shadow warping thing that Gabriel could do was _really_ annoying.

With a soft grunt Jack twisted around and fumbled for the tactical visor. Where had he put the damn thing? _When had he even taken it off?_ Jack could’ve sworn he went to sleep with it on. No matter, his fingers brushed against the wiring and electronics and he tugged the visor up and slotted it carefully into place over his eyes.

“Commander?” Lena questioned, but Jack ignored her in favor slipping his eyes closed while he felt the machine properly hook up to the cybernetic implants that he now bore on the sides of his face. With a small flinch he felt the system kick on.

Jack blinked a couple of times to adjust to suddenly being able to see again, even if the world was now coated in the orange material of the visor. The clarity always astounded him at first before he settled back. He swept his gaze across the room, calculated the changes that came after he fell asleep. He noted the lack of Jesse and of the girl, Sombra. He could see Widowmaker asleep on the bed, covered up under blankets. Finally he focused on Gabriel, in the corner by the window. The mass of Gabriel’s black clothes hid anything truly world changing about the other man’s figure. Jack did note that his hood seemed to be down for once, and the mask he wore settled onto the table.

Carefully Jack let his gaze track up—Gabriel was as muscled as he could remember, as fit as a race horse with thighs to make men and women drool. He made sure to keep his gaze steady and _not_ to linger, despite how much he really just wanted the chance to drink in all that Gabriel was without a firefight. He noted first that Gabriel _still_ wore the damn beanies on his head. Of course the man couldn’t go anywhere without the thing—probably still wore a hoody underneath all that Kevlar and leather, too, if he could get away with it. Jack repressed a snort.

Finally Jack took in Gabriel’s face, or well the half of Gabriel’s face he could see. He sucked in a shocked breath when he saw—when he saw _Gabriel._ Perfect, _untouched_ , Gabriel. He looked just as damning as Jack could remember—chiseled, like stone, with stubble here and there—features that haunted Jack in both his waking and his sleeping moments. The face that drove Jack insane with guilt and with—and Jack grit his teeth. _Of course_ the bastard got out of the Swiss HQ unscathed. He felt a surge of jealousy, of _anger_ over the whole mess.

It wasn’t enough that Gabriel destroyed Overwatch and all that they’d worked for; no, Gabriel had to _ruin_ Jack too, and then come out of his own shit storm perfectly _pristine_. Jack blinked back the _burn_ that came from his ruined tear ducts and tried to shove his emotions down into a box. He scanned Gabriel’s face this time with a dispassionate, disassociated view. The other man looked to be sleeping peacefully, his right side pressed into the pillow. Not a single part of the man looked to be in pain, nor did he appear to be the seething mass of hatred Jack grew to know.

 _Beautiful bastard,_ Jack seethed to himself and jerked his head away from Gabriel. He shakily got to his feet.

“Commander?” Lena questioned. She leaned out of Jack’s way.

“I need to piss,” Jack mumbled and hobbled his way past Lena and ignored the way his bones practically _creaked_ from age. He slipped open the door quietly, stepped inside, and when it clicked shut behind him did Jack lean his weight against it and groan. He breathed in through his nose and wrapped his hands into his hair when his breath hitched.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Jack wanted to punch something. Instead he slid down the door and tightened the grip of his fingers in his hair. He pressed his face, visor and all into his knees with a grunt. Jack squeezed his eyes shut and hissed when they burned while he tried to fight back the fury, the _fear_ , and the _bitterness and sorrow_ and all of his damned _longing_. He didn’t know what seeing Gabriel Reyes again could _do_ , but fuck if Jack resented it now. _Gabriel Reyes was dead_ , and he _hated_ it. Jack hated how much hope it brought him when he heard of Reaper, and of the Blackwatch-styled tactics that burst from Talon in the aftermath of everything.

Jack hated how much naivety he had in believing if he could just _prove himself_ , if he could _show_ Gabriel that damn it he was _trying_ —fuck was he _trying_ to see everything the other man told him—that Jack could admit despite everything that yes, _fuck_ , Gabriel Reyes was damn right all along—that maybe Gabriel would come back. Jack felt hope that maybe Gabriel could _forgive_ him for the shit he pulled, for leaving the other man for dead because Jack couldn’t _handle it._ He couldn’t handle being disfigured, being ruined—for not seeing everything crumbling around him when it was so damned _obvious_.

Jack hated the guilt that rose up within him that day when Ana screamed.

_“What happened to you!?”_

Jack swallowed down bitter and bile and hated the way his thoughts raced with _oh god, Gabe, what had he done? What had he **done?**_ Jack hated the what-ifs that clamored around—he hated how he hated himself—and now? To see Gabriel as _Gabriel_ merely dressed like Reaper, but peaceful, resting, and still _whole_ weird freaky powers aside? Jack hated the emotional turmoil that wrapped around him like a blanket. Jack hated _Gabriel_ for putting it there. Jack hated _himself_ for the surge of relief that Gabriel got out unscathed, and the guilt for abandoning him there in the wreckage.

 _“Ff-fuck,_ ” Jack spat out into his knees, as if that’d remove all the vileness that settled within him. He clenched his teeth together and pulled on his hair in an attempt to just stop himself from thinking. A part of him wanted to burst out yelling, to slam his fist into the wall and let go of his emotions for once. Jack wanted to slip into Soldier: 76, the vigilante who let go of his morals half the time and just _was_. He wanted to destroy something, _fuck collateral damage what did it matter anymore?_ He wanted to take is gun and _end it_ , the nightmare, _Gabriel, himself._ Jack wanted to aim his pulse rifle between Gabriel’s eyes and pull the trigger—aim it at his temple and pull the trigger—aim it _god knows where_ and just pull that damn trigger.

With a grunt Jack ripped the visor out of its ports and dropped it to the ground. The sudden snap from the thing disconnecting improperly jolted him, but he didn’t care. He could hear it clatter to the ground somewhere, but he didn’t care. He could hear Lena softly tap on the door, _but he didn’t care_. Jack curled up deeper into his own knees and pressed his burning eyes tighter against the material of his jeans and sucked in a breath.

In. Out. In. Out.

It took five minutes of Lena’s cautious tapping against the door and Jack’s own focused breathing before Jack uncurled himself and fumbled for the visor. He clicked it back on and winced when it sparked against his temple—the damn thing would probably end up running diagnostics over half of his vision for an hour now and he’d just have to deal with it. Jack climbed to his feet and stumbled over to the toilet.

With tired, trembling movements and a faint grunt of annoyance— _damn zippers_ —Jack finally took the piss he said he needed, washed his hands, and headed back to the door. He ignored the mirror, ignored the mess he knew he looked like, slipped the door back open.

Lena stared up at him, concerned, from the doorway and Jack just stood still and stared back down at her. He didn’t know what to say, or if he should say anything at all. Lena opened her mouth, then closed it at least twice. She couldn’t figure out what to say either. Jack sighed, tilted his head, and looked down at her chronal accelerator. He frowned.

The damned thing _still_ looked off.

Before Jack could speak up, concerned about the accelerator and about Lena herself, the door to the hotel room opened. Jesse stumbled into the room cursing up a storm, surprisingly Jack noticed that every word he said came out in Spanish, a familiar sound that Jack remembered fondly. He hadn’t even realized Jesse still slipped into the language when he was pissed off, but then most of what Jack knew about Jesse came from Angela’s reports that she snuck him after the recall went out. The sharp, _heavenly_ scent of food grabbed Jack’s attention next and he realized Jesse had bags full of take out from some place, and cups of coffee, which explained the cursing and the struggling with the door.

Sombra materialized into place next to Jesse to Jack’s surprise, and the kid twisted and spat something he was _pretty sure_ would’ve gotten Gabriel to wash Jesse’s mouth out with soap back in Blackwatch. He repressed a snort when Sombra merely stuck her tongue back out at Jesse and bounced in place while Jesse struggle the rest of the way in to the room.

“Gabe! _¡Papi!_ ” Sombra called cheerfully, and then the rest of whatever the young woman went to say Jack lost by the sheer speed of her words.

In the corner of the room Gabriel grunted awake, a familiar, nostalgic sound that Jack didn’t even realize he missed. The next second a black blur of smoke twisted up into Gabriel’s shape in front of Jesse. One talon, gloved hand already wrapped around a cup. Jesse jerked back in surprise, hands suddenly loose around the backs that he held as the door to the room finally clicked shut. Food and coffee tumbled from suddenly lax fingers as Jesse took a step back with a sharp, gut wrenching gasp of air. No one really noticed when Lena bolted into action and saved everything from making a mess on the floor.

“J-Jesus, Mary’n, Joseph,” Jesse gasped out. “G-Gabe?”

Gabriel swayed lazily in front of Jesse for a moment, not quite-awake even as he grasped the cup of coffee. Then Gabriel stiffened and bolted into a swirl of smoke back to the corner. When he solidified again Jack could see him already pulling the mask onto his face, and not even a second later he dematerialized again and then rematerialized in front of Sombra. He stood stiff, bore down on her, cup of coffee still grasped into his hand.

Sombra crossed her arms and stood firm in front of Gabriel where lesser men and woman would start shaking— _hell_ Jack had seen Jesse do just that in front of a furious Gabriel before. In fact the kid might’ve even pissed himself, but Jack couldn’t remember clearly the exact details of the few instances Gabriel actually stared the kid down.

“You’d complain about it being sticky,” Sombra pointed out as she stared back at Gabriel. Gabriel twisted and writhed in front of her, still silent. Sombra tossed her hands up and snapped, “Oh please you never sleep with the damn thing on, _papi!_ Who cares if they see you?”

“ _I. Do_ ,” Gabriel growled, low and gravelly in the way he sounded ever since he became _Reaper_. Sombra twisted her head off to the side and pursed her lips at the obvious reprimand.

For a moment the whole room stood in a stiff sort of stand off. Jack watched the way Gabriel stood, watched how Sombra curled up like a child, how Jesse even seemed to cringe away from Gabriel and the sheer _disappointment_ the other man radiated. Jack wondered just why Gabriel still exuded such—such—he couldn’t find the word and tiredly he rubbed at his forehead and the wrinkles there. Gabriel was so _Gabriel_ and it honestly just left Jack lost for words.

A soft sigh sounded from the bed where Widowmaker slept, and then aged, and deadly amused, the entire room could hear the voice of Ana Amari. “Honestly Gabriel, you never used to be so _self-conscious_.”

“Fuck off, Ana,” Gabriel grumbled.

Jack twisted in surprise—he knew she was nearby yesterday, keeping an eye on him as he went toe to toe with Gabriel, but he hadn’t realized she’d been pulled wherever here was too. He noticed how no one else seemed surprised to see her and frowned.

“Morning, Jack,” Ana waved. “Finally finished ogling Gabriel to notice me, have you?”

Jack’s face went red.

“I was not—” he started, and then cut the words off. Gabriel actually had the gall to _snort_ as the man visibly walked away from Sombra to close the open window.

“As if he’d ogle me anymore, Ana,” Gabriel groaned and eased himself into his chair. He tilted his mask up enough to drink his coffee, and for a moment Jack _swore_ he could see tears in Gabriel’s flesh, a gaping open wound into his mouth on his right side.

Jack shook himself. He had to have imagined it.

“Hm, and I suppose you _didn’t_ leave behind a burned mess last night either, Gabriel?” Ana tilted her head toward Gabriel as she grabbed food for both herself and Jack from Lena.

“What?” Jack asked, but everyone decided to ignore him.

“Saw that, did you?” Gabriel mumbled instead.

“Be thankful I cleaned it up,” Ana huffed. “Fire is _messy_. I thought Sombra asked you _not_ to leave a mess behind?”

Gabriel shrugged and Ana shook her head. She dragged Jack over to the table he slept at last night, pulled a chair over, and dropped some food in front of him.

“Thought you were supposed to be on the boy scouts side,” Gabriel sighed as he eased back in to his chair. Ana didn’t even grace the comment with a reply, although Jack raised his eyebrows at her because honestly he was wondering the exact same thing himself.

The room settled into a tense sort of silence as each person grabbed food and began to eat. Sombra brought a large bag over to Gabriel and dropped it on the table next to him, then plopped herself onto the bed by Widowmaker and began to wave some sort of drink under the sniper’s nose. Jack _thought_ she might have been crooning something, but he had no idea what. He did see Widowmaker wake up slowly and grab the drink. Most of the young woman’s hair hid her face from view, but she didn’t seem to speak while Sombra carefully piled on food for the both of them.

Jesse settled onto the bed he and Lena fell asleep on yesterday and divvied up food between them. Jack caught the tail end of some sort of apology that Lena waved off before both of them dug into the food. The fact that they weren’t at each others throats _still_ drove Jack a bit mad. These were Overwatch agents and Talon agents respectively. While Jack not attempting to kill Gabriel and his friends wasn’t too odd—he wasn’t Overwatch anymore, and neither was Ana—that didn’t mean he expected such civility to come from Lena and Jesse too. Or from Gabriel, considering how much the man seemed to _want_ to kill Jack and make him suffer.

“They take after you,” Ana mused calmly and Jack looked to her confused. “The kids, Jack. They’re following your lead.” She glanced to Gabriel. “And his.”

“Not my kids,” Jack grumbled.

“Oh you always claimed they weren’t your kids, but we knew better, didn’t we?” Ana mused.

“Ana…” Jack groaned, and she laughed.

The room ate in relatively silence aside from the occasionally conversation between Widowmaker and Sombra, or Jesse and Lena. Jack focused on his food and not on the confusion that bounced around his skull about this mess. Halfway through the meal that Jesse and Sombra brought back Sombra made her way over to his and Ana’s table. She leaned forward and placed her chin into her hand with a wide smile.

“Weell?” she drawled out. “Did you get it?”

Ana chuckled. “Of course I did,” the aged Egyptian woman said softly. “And you?”

“All set up!” Sombra said cheerfully. “We could check out of this old place in a day or two after things settle.”

“Mm,” Ana agreed softly.

Jack looked between the two, but Ana didn’t bother to explain. She merely patted him on the hand, gathered up her food, and moved over to the bed with Widowmaker. Sombra trailed after her, chatting away quite calmly. Jack watched in confusion. He couldn’t help but wonder just when his life turned into _this_. God he must be getting old. That had to be it. Jack went back to his food in silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ana shows off what a badass she is, and tears into her stupid boys. Gabriel has more issues than he can name. Sombra helps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for literal mind control and violence/intent to do harm. The violence/intent to do harm comes really close to the start of the chapter and is described. First portion where the mind control happens (later in the chapter) has consenting loss of body autonomy, but the second portion has non-consensual loss of body autonomy. The divide is clearly marked as a flashback. Also body horror really starts to come into play here in regards to Gabriel. He's not exactly okay, and I've hinted at how, but it's worse and better than you probably think. Descriptions are kept mostly vague.
> 
> No one in Talon is really nice.

Ana kept her hand arms wrapped tight around Jesse’s flesh-and-blood arm as they walked down the street. She let her lips curl at the stiff gait that came off of the boy, the only real sign of how uncomfortable he really was with Ana hanging off of him. She chuckled, leaned her head onto his shoulder, and hummed lightly.

“When did you get so big?” Ana mused lightly, and then laughed the way Jesse ducked his head.

“I jus’ kept growin’,” Jesse grumbled.

“You’re as tall as Jack and Gabe now,” Ana hummed. She pat lightly against his arm and took pity on him. Ana embarrassed him enough and so she gently pulled away. She did keep one arm clasped around him, but Ana didn’t lean so heavily on to him any further. The way Jesse seemed to relax made Ana smile at the least.

“An’ where are we going?” Jesse questioned, he tilted his hat low and looked to her out of the corner of his eyes. Ana gave him a small smile, patted his arm, and tilted her head up the street.

“See that building there?” Jesse looked toward where Ana gestured. “That’s the one.”

Jesse looked at the building under the lip of his hat and pressed his lips together. The building Ana pointed out looked a bit run down. The windows were in need of some repair, given the cracks along the front of the building and that’s just what Jesse could see from the outside. He didn’t want to think what a mess security wise the building would be in; Gabriel, Jack, and Ana would essentially put all of the shit jobs on getting the place up to par he could _see_ it.

“Bit of a busy street,” Jesse noted calmly. Another frustrating point against the building, but then some of Blackwatch’s best safe houses were buried in the busiest part of town. People didn’t tend to notice you when they had far better things on mind that someone possibly wearing tactical gear.

“Oh quit your complaining,” Ana drawled. “The paperwork is almost done.”

“It’s a death trap,” Jesse grumbled, ducked his head low, and groaned when he saw the front stoop. He led Ana away from the building and down the street tiredly.

“Maybe so,” Ana mused, “but then it’s better than being a hotel room, is it not?” After two days of close proximity to not just Sombra, Lena, and Amélie, but also Jack and Gabriel and whatever pissing contest the two boys had, Ana _knew_ Jesse longed for some space. She could see it in the way the boy twitched at every little conversation.

“I don’t know if I’d say _better_ ,” Jesse drawled, and Ana smacked him lightly on the shoulder. He laughed. “Nah, yer right,” Jesse agreed. “It’d give us somethin’ t’ do at least.”

“Knew you would see it my way,” Ana told him, a devious smile curled at her lips. Jesse faked a gasp and looked down at her, somewhat betrayed, and the aged Egyptian woman let out a sharp laugh. “Come, let us get some food for everyone.”

“Lord knows they’re all goin’ crazier then a hen house,” Jesse agreed tiredly.

“It can’t be easy, unable to step outside because of the stark differences.”

Jesse grunted.

“I’m jes’ lucky I can hide m’arm,” Jesse mumbled. “Can’t hide Jack’s visor.”

“No, and there aren’t many good options to hide Gabriel’s face, either,” Ana agreed.

“Then there’s Widowmaker—”

“Amélie, boy, use her name,” Ana said shortly and Jesse winced.

“Right. Sorry. Amélie’s skin’s all blue. An’ Lena’s got that thing she can’t go nowhere without,” Jesse wanted to scrub at his beard, but he kept his prosthetic limb as still as possible. Instead he closed his eye and let out a tired sigh. “Ain’t makin’ this mess any easier.”

Ana hummed. “We make do with what we have,” she said calmly. “Is that not what we’ve always done?”

Jesse grunted. “We ain’t some family, Ana.”

“Aren’t we though?” Ana tilted her head toward Jesse and raised her eyebrows. “Are you honestly telling me you don’t miss Gabriel? That you don’t still see him as a father figure?”

Jesse turned his head away and scowled. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Yes he missed Gabriel, he missed the man who didn’t give him really any sort of choice at all—join Blackwatch and be a killer ‘for the good guys’, or go to jail and face a probable death penalty for all of his crimes in Deadlock—he missed the man who taught him how to use the skills Deadlock bashed into his skull in new and unique ways. Yeah Jesse also missed the way Gabriel would bicker with Jack, how they’d get into these petty little fights over nothing at all some days. He missed how _protective_ Gabriel could be, how _safe_ the man made him.

“That all ended in Switzerland,” Jesse said instead. Ana frowned.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Jesse sighed. He ducked his head low and practically mumbled, “No.”

 _And there we go_ , Ana thought to herself. She’d watched her boys struggle for two days around each other. Gabriel and Jack and Jesse all twisted up in ways that only the could knot themselves into over the mess that happened in Switzerland. It made her sad that everything went to shit in such a horrible way, but even she could see the mess before them honestly was a long time in coming. There were more reasons than just Fareeha for why Ana didn’t bother to come back from the dead. She took on the name Shrike long before Jack became Soldier: 76 after all.

“Well then,” Ana hummed, “consider yourself recruited, McCree.” Jesse jerked his head around to look at her, eyes wide and mouth slipping slack jawed. “Our operation’s main goal is to get those two boys to deal with their feelings.”

“Gabe’ll _kill me_ ,” Jesse wheezed.

Ana waved her hand and shook her head, a pleased smile on her face. “Oh please he’ll do nothing of the sort. He might shoot you, though.”

“Same damn thing, Ana!”

“I’d be more worried about Jack,” Ana continued calmly. “ _He_ might actually try to kill you.”

“Jesus, Mary’n Joseph _that is not helpin’_ ,” Jesse wheezed, and Ana laughed. Oh how she missed this; she missed teasing the various agents and children that wandered Overwatch. She missed ribbing Blackwatch members, Gabriel, and Jack alike. Honestly Ana couldn’t be happier that Lena’s chronal accelerator was on the fritz. Maybe now her boys could actually get some honest healing in between them.

Ana knew they had to deal with the mess of Overwatch’s downfall and the Petras Act that came out in response. Ana knew they couldn’t leave things be the way they were, not with the number of dead on all of their minds. The tally marks grew taller and taller each year they lived on and their men did not. However unlike Jack and Gabriel Ana could tell that being apart the way they were _wasn’t_ working. Oh yes working with Jack was a dream—she missed the good days of a small strike team that Overwatch used to be, back during the hell of the Omnic Crisis—but he was old, stubborn, and stuck in his beliefs. The boy tried to change, tried to meld the way he thought but without Gabriel there to push him—Ana never could quite push him the way Gabriel could—Jack just _stagnated_. Once they healed the rift between them, once they got onto the same page, _then_ could the three of them get together and correct the mess they created.

“Come, Jesse,” Ana said; she filed her thoughts away. “Food.”

Jesse tipped his hat; without the hand it looked rather silly but Ana didn’t say anything. She teased the boy enough for now. He deserved a reprieve.

“Yes ma’am,” Jesse mumbled, and led them down the street towards the same place he’d gotten them take out from the past two days. Ana wondered if she should nudge him in a different direction—something more familiar perhaps?—but oh seeing Gabriel and Jack’s expression when they were given the same food _again_. Ah, decisions, decisions. A little chaos in return for eating the same food once more, or liven things up with something different…Ana mused on the merits of both as she tilted her head up to the sky. She hadn’t had this much fun in _years_.

* * *

 

Jack stepped out of the bathroom and eyed the hotel room with mild distaste. Two days and he felt trapped, stuck in a room with Talon, with Gabriel, with Ana being even more overbearing than normal, and then the Overwatch kids. Jack didn’t know what to think half the time. Already Lena took to racing around the room to alleviate her own boredom, he could barely step two feet lately without having to dodge a blur of blue and yellow. Thankfully she tired out just as quickly which granted some alleviation. Then there was Widowmaker, who often stared at Jack and the rest distrustfully.

Right now the French woman curled around Gabriel, a book in her hand that Jack couldn’t place being in the room before. Sombra sat in Gabriel’s “chair” tapping away on the table at something only she could see, endlessly amused. Gabriel himself took to lounging in just a sweatshirt, beanie atop his head, with his mask on his face. No matter what anyone said the man still refused to take the mask off in Jack’s presence. Honestly that more than anything grated on Jack’s nerves.

The television of the hotel room had some sort of soap on, as far as Jack could figure. A telenovela probably if Jack had to guess by the dramatic music and Spanish dialogue. He didn’t bother to glance at the screen, didn’t even bother to display any sort of interest. Instead Jack moved back to his “chair” and settled down with a groan. He picked up his pulse riffle and began to disassemble and reassemble the weapon methodically in silence. It worked to at least clear his head, like it’d done back in their SEP days while waiting for the results of Gabriel’s latest injections.

After a while Gabriel’s attention drifted from the telenovela when a commercial came on, and Jack was acutely aware of where his stare landed. It burned like an itch under his skin; Gabriel always had that effect on Jack. Jack stretched and shifted, half uncomfortable with the look and half embarrassed. Part of him _missed_ that gaze, the way it’d burn through him and take in his general health with a quick check up and down. Eventually Jack grimaced and looked up, caught sight of Gabriel’s mask, and pressed his lips tightly against his gritted in an effort to stop from snarling.

Jack grunted. “What?”

He watched that mask turn away, watched Gabriel shift next to Widowmaker and change how his legs were crossed.

“What’s with the skin tight suit?” eventually Gabriel asked, although his words were a mere mutter.

Jack blinked, glanced down at himself in confusion at the perfectly reasonable question. Sure he’d given up on wearing the old jacket for now. It wasn’t really the best of things to keep on all the time; it didn’t have the greatest ability to breath. Jack just didn’t realize that _maybe_ his choice of shirt underneath was an odd one without realizing that the jacket got _hot_ and he needed something that helped cool him down.

“It’s moisture wicking,” Jack eventually replied with a tired sigh. It was also similar to the turtleneck he wore in Overwatch, although it did cover more of his neck then the old Strike Commander outfit and it fit tighter over his skin.

“And the brace?” Gabriel turned his gaze back on Jack.

“Helps with firing the pulse riffle,” Jack grunted. A second later Jack realized that perhaps he shouldn’t have admitted to that so easily, especially the way he began to itch from the sudden _intense_ stare from Gabriel. Jack ground his teeth together. “What _now._ ”

Gabriel didn’t say anything at first. Instead he slipped out of the bed. Widowmaker sighed and pouted, then shifted herself to sit up. She switched the channel on the telenovela and suddenly Jack could hear _French_. He wondered how they had a clearly French show in New York then decided he probably didn’t want to know. By the time Jack’s attention refocused on Gabriel the man stood right in front of him.

“What else,” Gabriel demanded lowly. His normal growl practically turned demonic.

“What?”

“ _What. Else._ ”

Jack couldn’t help it. His jaw sort of dropped and his brow furrowed in confusion. He couldn’t quite ascertain why Gabriel wanted to _know_. The man never showed any interest in the extent of Jack’s injuries or advancement of old ones before.

“Get that stupid look off your face, _boy scout_ , and answer the fucking question,” Gabriel snapped, and that’s where Jack lost it.

With a snarl Jack burst to his feet and got right into Gabriel’s space. The other man jerked back in surprise at the sudden movement, at the way Jack seemed almost _feral_.

“Why do you suddenly care?” Jack spat out. “After _seven fucking years_ why do you even care, Gabe?”

“You as well as I know that your condition and _mine_ have correlating _concerns!_ ” Gabriel snarled.

Jack laughed bitterly and bared his teeth. “Oh, yeah? Well why don’t you tell me the state of your _organs_ , Gabe. Had any heart attacks recently? What about liver failure? How are your kidneys doing lately?” Jack could practically _hear_ Gabriel grind his teeth together. He let out another bitter laugh, but didn’t anticipate Gabriel decking him.

Jack grunted at the sudden strike across his jaw. He didn’t bother to test the damage, or even spit out the blood that began dribbled from his split lip. Instead he retaliated in kind, shoving his fist right into Gabriel’s gut. The other man grunted, a sort of _wet_ sound, and then they were tearing into one another. Fingers scrambled for purchase as they grasped at each other. Fists smacked into known weak points. Knees jabbed up to knock the stomach, or a bowed head after a blow to the solar plexus. They brawled, didn’t bother to say anything more to one another aside from spat curses.

None of the girls in the room could figure what to do except stare at the two, grown old men duke it out fervently. They couldn’t exactly intervene—the sheer strength of the punches could cause irreparable damage to either one of them thanks to the enhanced strength of both men. Eventually they landed on the floor, twisted around one another. They flipped each other around, tried to gain the upper hand. Neither noticed the door open, or the smell of food, too intent on causing as much damage to the other as they damn well could.

Gabriel gained the upper hand, twisted Jack onto his back and wrapped his fingers around the soldier’s neck and _squeezed_. He sat on his knees, slightly above the other man’s waist, and grunted with every sudden gasped bit of air out of Jack. Gabriel’s mask was askew, cracked and broken in places, enough that Jack could see his teeth and the way he bared them. Jack could see the way half of his mouth seemed ripped and torn open, bare tissue and bone visible from gaping holes in his cheek.

Jack grasped at Gabriel’s hands, bucked up with a ragged, _wheeze_ at an attempt to pull in more air. Gabriel just squeezed tighter and shifted to dodge the raised knee. He snarled, growled almost animalistic in his fury. So focused on Jack he didn’t notice Ana storm over to them, grab Jack’s pulse riffle, until she slammed the butt of it into the back of his head. Gabriel’s grip slipped, he grunted at the sudden strike, and Jack twisted and regained the upper hand. His own fingers went for Gabriel’s neck, but Ana slammed the pulse riffle into his side and knocked him off the other man.

“Jack! _Enough!_ ” Ana snapped out. Jack wheezed, and Gabriel moved to pounce when Ana slammed her foot onto his chest. “You too, Gabriel!” Gabriel stilled under the woman’s intense, furious stare. Once Ana was certain both men wouldn’t try to kill each other again she stepped back, dropped the pulse riffle, and placed her hands on her hips, face cold. “Now what the hell happened here, for you to be at each other’s throats?”

“He started it,” Jack coughed out. He rubbed at his own neck with a faint grimace. _Fuck_ he forgot Gabriel could pack a mean punch when he really got going.

“I don’t care who started it, _I ended it!_ ” Ana snapped back at Jack who had the grace to turn his head away. “Do I _need_ to treat you like you are five? You remember how I discipline Fareeha; don’t make me do the same to you! Answer my fucking question, both of you.”

Jack said nothing. Refused to, in fact given the way he set his jaw stubbornly and refused to even look at Ana. He knew full well that her threat was a valid one. Ana _would_ treat Jack and Gabriel like she did Fareeha as a child; like five year old children in need of discipline.

Gabriel answered instead after he had a second to collect himself. Cowed under Ana’s glare he grumbled a faint, _tired_ , “Discussion gone sour. Won’t happen again.”

“It better not,” Ana ground out, and looked to Jack. “Will it, Jack?”

Jack grunted out a no. He still refused to look at Ana, or even at Gabriel.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Morrison!” Ana snapped out, and Jack’s gaze snapped right to her. “ _Will it?_ ”

Jack huffed, scrubbed a hand down his face tiredly. He _ached_. “No, Ana, it won’t happen again,” he rasped.

Ana nodded. “Good. Get up. Shower. Jesse and I brought back food.” She shot a glance to Gabriel. “And take off that damned mask, Gabriel. It’ll only cut your face the way it is now.”

Jack could hear Gabriel grunt something out, and Ana say something further, but he didn’t care anymore. He focused on rolling to his side instead, and then getting to his feet. Jack limped toward the bathroom and winced at the way whole portions of him _throbbed_. He’d come out black and blue and swollen at this rate. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jesse cautiously setting down the bags, wide eyed. Jack closed his eyes. What a fucking mess.

* * *

 

Reaper stuffed another forkful of the greek salad into his mouth angrily. He sat mostly hunched over with the salad in his lap, legs crossed. Widow pressed against his back and Sombra leaned against his side. A piece of lettuce poked out of Reaper’s cheek where the skin torn away. He tugged it back with his tongue and tried to ignore the way Jesse stared as he hungrily stuffed his gyro into his mouth. Lena focused on her own meal, leaned up against Jesse in a way Reaper hadn’t seen since the end days of Overwatch.

Ana perched herself in the space between the beds, between Reaper and Jack, and focused on her own calmly. Jack, not that Reaper really deigned to notice because he honestly wasn’t interested, kept his back to the rest of the room. The other man ate his food in silence and with great disapproval. It made Reaper want to throttle the man. They may have been at each others throats earlier, and yes Ana may have put a stop to it, but _fuck_ did he have to act so damned childish?!

 _Entitled **ass**_ , Reaper mentally snarled and took a rather vicious bite out of his salad. He rather enjoyed the way his mouth full of more teeth that a mouth rightfully should have tore into the rabbit food. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as meat, but it was satisfying enough. From her spot on the floor Ana snorted in amusement at Reaper, and his gaze—twisted by shadows and ash and god knows what else—immediately snapped to her.

Ana daintily took one of the napkins and wiped her mouth clean before she sat it upon the crumbs of her own food. She looked to Reaper coolly, eyebrows raised. “So,” Ana asked. “How long do you have?”

Reaper’s spine stiffened. While he might not be too upset over the fact that Ana _knew_ —Jack and Ana were aware that he got _something_ out of others well before he died, some sort of substance his body _craved_ and couldn’t quite fathom how to recreate ever since SEP and the drugs that fucked him up—but that Ana _knew_ to the extent his devouring of _whatever the fuck it’d been_ grew since Switzerland made him anxious in ways he couldn’t describe. Reaper growled softly and stared Ana back down.

“I’m fine,” the wraith uttered.

“Hm.”

Ana, obviously, didn’t believe him. _Damn her_ , and damn that knowing stare she had. Out of everyone Ana could always tell when Reaper lied, or held something back, or essentially anything that he wanted to keep under wraps. She could needle shit from him with a few looks and a few words, get him to _talk_ about things that Reaper refused. It made him pissed, but way back when Gabriel felt thankful for it. Now Reaper _hated_ it.

“A few days then,” Ana decided calmly, and began to clean up her utensils.

Reaper snarled and jerked his head away from her. He wanted to reach out and wrap his hands around her neck, let his nails _shift_ into needles and pierce her throat. _Days_ , Ana said. _Fuck her and how well she could read him!_ It took him a bit longer than he’d like before Reaper realized that to turn his head from Ana had the effect of baring the full brunt of the right side of his face to the room. When it did register that everyone now had an eyeful of the scars, the gaping holes in his cheek, and then stretched bits of skin that Reaper didn’t want to imagine displayed to the world, he jerkily reached up and pulled the hood of his hoodie low over his head. Reaper ducked his face down to his chin and silently berated himself for letting Ana get to him.

Sombra reached out and clasped her fingers around one of his large hands, and he glanced to her. She spoke low enough that only Jack could honestly hear her with, and she kept her words in Spanish. “ _It’s okay. I know. Tomorrow, okay?_ ”

Reaper blinked at her, then ducked his head down in understanding. Sombra patted him on the arm, then pulled back with a small smile. She glanced over to Ana, and Reaper followed her gaze to find the woman finished cleaning and now stood before him with something white in her hands. Before Reaper could really parse what Ana planned to do she reached out, tugged the surgical mask over his face, and then shoved a pair of sunglasses onto his eyes.

Reaper hissed. The edge scraped against _something_ — _fuck, it felt like another eye, shit_ —before it settled on his ear. The next second Ana yanked down his hood, pulled off his beanie, readjusted his hair to cover the right side of his face, and shoved the beanie back over his head.

“What the fuck?” Reaper snarled.

“You’re coming with Jesse and me,” Ana said bluntly. “I don’t trust you in the room with Jack right now.”

Jack snorted.

“I don’t trust you either, Jack!” Ana snapped out and the other soldier grit his teeth hard enough that Reaper could _hear_ them grind against one another.

“I’m not exactly _normal_ , Ana,” Reaper decided to say instead.

“Hence the glasses, and the mask,” Ana said calmly. “Now come.” She pulled Reaper up with little fuss and glanced to Jesse who still had a gyro stuffed in his face, watching the exchange with wide eyes. “Jesse.”

Jesse swallowed. “Yessum?”

“Come.”

“Yessum.”

Jesse set the rest of his gyro down and got to his feet. He started after Ana, only to not get three feet before Ana gripped his prosthetic arm and _twisted_. With a faint hiss and a _pop_ the metal arm broke free of the stump and socket. Jesse winced at the sudden disconnect, and then stared forlornly at his mechanical limb.

“Why?” he whined.

“A precaution,” Ana said. She handed the limb to Oxten, who stared at it in shock, and then tugged Jesse by his flesh and blood arm and Reaper by his hoodie. “Now, you two are father and son.” She shot Jesse and Reaper a look when both started to speak. “Ah! Gabriel, you are my husband.”

Ana dragged the boys out of the room. Reaper could _hear_ Sombra giggling in the background and Widow make some sort of noise in the back of her throat before the door clicked shut. Ana continued to explain as she pulled them along.

“We’re going to get everyone some better clothes, and then meet with the real estate agent that Sombra’s been handling,” Ana continued calmly. “Jesse I’m your step-mother; your birth mother died in the accident that took your arm and scarred your face, Gabriel.”

“This is fucking _stupid_ ,” Reaper grunted.

“Deal with it.”

“What if someone _sees_?” The words were hissed and accompanied with small wafts of smoke that drifted from the back of Reaper’s neck.

“They won’t,” Ana reassured him. She glanced him up and down and smiled in the way that always got Gabriel or Jack to do just as she wanted. “Your hair is _perfect_ to hide what the glasses and mask can’t.”

“Anyone’ll be more focused on the glasses and mask anyway,” Jesse mumbled and Reaper pinned him with a stare.

“You knew?” he huffed between his teeth. Jesse raised his stump, since Ana had his other arm in a death grip.

“Nope. Just as surprised as you.”

Reaper sighed heavily and pulled his hoodie out of Ana’s grip. “I can walk myself,” he mumbled, and dutifully trailed after her. Shopping trips with Ana Amari were _hell_ , made ever worse by the fact that Reaper wasn’t rightly human anymore if he thought about it. Most of his focus would be on not drifting into smoke at the twist of anxiety in his gut at being out in _public_ like this. Odd how he could wander the world among Talon agents and not feel a damned thing, but settle him with these fools and suddenly every nervous tick came tumbling back.

For a moment Reaper tried to put himself into the mind of the assassin, the ruthless killer who enjoyed his job a little too much. Maybe if he truly embraced _Reaper_ on this jaunt he wouldn’t notice that there wasn’t actually a target, or bloodshed at the end? But no, he couldn’t. Not now, not with _Jesse_ right there, blissfully unaware of the exact depths Reaper long fell to. He tilted his head to the sky and let himself slump into a messy ball of a human, sans the smoke heightened emotions typically pulled out of him.

“Three days to myself,” he said to Ana, his only bargaining chip in this mess. “No you, no Jack, no one on my ass about _anything_.”

Jesse frowned and tilted his Stetson low on his head. Thankfully he didn’t say anything. Reaper didn’t know what he’d do to the boy if he did.

“Deal,” Ana said, gaze entirely too empathetic for Reaper’s liking.

A little bit of the tension eased from Reaper’s shoulders. “Amari or Reyes?”

“Amari,” Ana continued. “Jesse is still a McCree. I might be his step-mother but I sure as hell am not adopting the boy.”

“Damn,” Jesse whistled. “That’s cold, forcing a man to take the wife’s name.”

“You’re not too young for me to bend over my knee young man,” Ana warned.

Reaper chuckled at the by-play. It brought to mind better days, or Sombra’s never-subtle ribbing. “Listen to your mother, ingrate.”

“Fuck you, _dad_.”

Reaper couldn’t help it. He burst into a full belly laugh that cased away the rest of the tension and anxiety. He couldn’t believe that he _missed_ this. This bullshit play between Gabriel Reyes and Jesse McCree, the way Ana would step in as ‘mom’ and how Jack would be ‘dad’ – how Blackwatch and Overwatch were constantly likened to the kids they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing with. It brought to mind days when Jesse was just a sixteen year old facing death row, of Genji bitter and furious and in constant need of an ass kicking and a tender hand both.

Unbidden tears slipped into his eyes and before Reaper knew it Ana wrapped him into a hug. Jesse pulled them into a small corner of the hallway of the hotel. Together they wrapped Reaper up and he started to just _cry_. He missed it; he _hated_ it.

Jack who left him to die. Jack whom he loved. Jack whom left _Ana_ to die, whom burned Overwatch to the ground. Jack whom the world _loved_ and Gabriel that the world vilified. Everyone blamed him, _hated_ him and Reaper hated the world back. He lashed out and raged, he let himself fall and twist—let the ones who revived him control him. He hated Jack. He loved Jack. He hated what he became and he loved what he was in equal measure. Reaper hated the anger and the hatred, but he thrived with it, thrived _in it_.

Part of him wanted to rip them apart, to devour Ana and Jesse and another part recoiled and cried out— _what had he become_? How was this his life now? Reviled, dead, the bane of the world and the source of its problems? Blackwatch brought Overwatch down— _Jack brought Overwatch down and pulled Blackwatch with it_ —he missed the good old days— _he wanted to burn it all to the ground again, and again, and again_.

Gabriel cracked, and Reaper clawed at his head. He leaned into Ana; he let her whisper soft phrases in his ear—nonsense words in Arabic because Reaper didn’t want to hear words now. Noise was better, noise soothed Gabriel. It always soothed him when he was this twisted and broken and _dead_ inside. On his other side Jesse smelled like smoke—like _home_.

The urge to kill, to take his time and _play_ with it swelled within his breast. _How dare they—how **dare** they. Home was gone—it killed him—they **killed him and left him there—** left him for rot and ruin and Jack’s corruptive fingers tightened like a noose around his neck and—_

Jesse whispered, “ _Pa,”_ in a way Reaper hadn’t heard since the boy finally realized he wouldn’t be going anywhere and that Gabriel was there to _stay_ —his breath hitched and Reaper stilled. It took a few minutes longer where Ana gently carded her fingers through his hair that hung down at the back of his neck, and then Reaper got to his feet in a fluid motion. He moved onward in silence, emotions tampered down and wrapped within bars of iron.

Reaper didn’t see Jesse or Ana exchange glances behind him, or how they followed after him in silence for a moment, only to devolve into the sounds of familiar bickering seconds later. Reaper ignored them. Instead he focused on the _job_. Clothes, see this agent, and then return to Sombra and have her make the world go _quiet_. Screw tomorrow, he needed it _today_.

* * *

 

Amélie noticed it first, much to Sombra’s consternation. When Gabriel stepped through the door, a stiff and quiet wraith of a man, Amélie tugged at Sombra’s shoulder and hissed softly, “ _Chérie._ ” Sombra twisted, and then dashed forward without a word, Amélie on her heels. They reached Gabriel before Jack could even get to his feet out of whatever emotion the old man now felt.

Amélie ducked up under one of Gabriel’s arms and took hold of him around the waist. The bags dropped from his hands immediately upon the touch from the slighter woman. Gabriel bowed forward until his head dropped onto Sombra’s shoulder who stopped shortly before the man, hands up. Sombra sighed; in response she lightly stroked her fingers over his beanie, tugged the hat off of his head, and began to remove the mask and glasses.

The young Mexican woman carded her fingers through Gabriel’s hair for a moment as he breathed into her shoulder. She whispered, _“I got you, papi_ , _”_ and then tapped her fingers to his temple. When they pulled away bright lights of purple-pink trailed from each of her tips, and then lit up into an in an ever-shifting pattern along his skin. Gabriel went limp, caught into Amélie’s arms before he could crash into the ground. Sombra, in front of him, stiffened.

The feedback loop of connecting in this way with Gabriel, off their schedule by days at that, always hammered into the back of her head like a sharp chisel. The brilliant work Talon did on the corpse and lack of corpse thereafter always left Sombra breathless, but the hack job they continued once they verified life left her disgusted. Sombra barely breathed aside from a slow, measured breath incited by her own technological enhancements that she procured to up her ‘game.’

That still didn’t mean that interfacing this way, with a man so twisted up in the way that Gabriel Reyes always was, with nanites half-rotting from decades of abuse, didn’t have its own side effects. Sombra’s legs gave out—she could feel herself _drop_ —but the rest of the outside world faded, inconsistent sounds and sensations. Instead Gabriel encompassed most of her senses—and she _hated_ this violation. Hacking a computer or an Omnic was one thing; hacking a _person_ made her ill.

Jesse grabbed Sombra around her waist; she could feel the strength of his arm and feel herself being moved—yet still close to Gabriel and that’s all that mattered. She could hear distant noise, but distant noise meant nothing to the raging, buzzing that itched beneath her skin. Sombra sighed amidst her even breaths. Her eyes practically glowed with the effect of her own nanites, turning brilliant blues bright purple-pink.

_I’vegotyouyoursafeit’sokaypapiI’mhere._

Words flowed as thought and ones and zeroes across the bits and pieces that made Gabriel function, ran together in soothing phrases that let the other man drop into a state of nonexistence. Sombra _forced_ the power down like he was an Omnic— _forced_ a state of suspension with a little thought and twist of her fingers. She forced her way into the coding and the torn apart shreds of old machines that limped along past their prime. Pieces of Gabriel continued to move despite not knowing how to do so anymore, or even why to bother.

Sombra encoded a _why_ and a _how_ with thought and feeling. She tugged out memories of better and happier days—of Gabriel whole; of family and acceptance. The twisted, broken memories of Overwatch Sombra took and carefully packed away. She didn’t box or seal them, but marked them to be looked over later when an emergency like this didn’t require her entire attention. She couldn’t parse those memories now; couldn’t look for raging inconsistencies or handle the sharpened emotions contained within. She kept to lighter times, periods that would help facilitate growth and healing—help facilitate a return of _humanity_ to a man many considered a monster.

_“What is she doing?”_

_“Maintenance.”_

That word brought so many memories back. Sombra shuddered faintly.

_Shortly after being brought back to the world of the living Gabriel broke down for the first time. His nanites refused to repair; entire portions of himself collapsed into mist and smoke, others into inky black tar. At the time Talon didn’t know what to do; their best technicians and mechanical engineers could only declare that the nanites that enforced Gabriel Reyes to continue living finally reached their end. They tried to prolong it, to push his life further onward with newer and newer nanites—but there was something wrong in the programming._

_In the end Talon hired Sombra. She could still remember that day when she first touched Gabriel; remember when he wheezed on the table and spat smoke and coughed shadows. She could remember how whole portions of him became monstrous, inhuman, and how it withered all away. At first she had no idea who she’d been called in to ‘help’ but the pay ultimately was good, and honestly she’d barely experimented with nanite tech and what she could do to it herself, aside from her own nanites and cyborg qualities self-drafted into her skin._

_The job was **intended** as a curiosity. A test of Sombra’s limitations._

_“Remove the mask,”_ _Sombra uttered coldly, arms crossed, elbow of one placed in her palm as she tapped at her cheek. “I need to see the extent of the damage.”_

_The Talon ‘doctor,’ a word Sombra would always **loosely** associate with the quacks of the organization, scoffed and moved to reiterate how she was to do nothing, could demand nothing, unless it involved her own skills and knowledge regarding nanite technology. Sombra settled the man with a cold look instead, lips pressed together._

_“Do you want your precious weapon **intact** , **puto** , you will do as I say.” She gave the man a cold smile. “After all I don’t **have** to fix what you broke, no? And won’t that just piss off your **boss** pretty boy?” She chuckled at the way the man grit his teeth, leaned over and gave him a wink, and with a burst of energy to get away from her he stormed over to the Reaper and snatched the mask away._

_Sombra noted the way the smoke curled, tried to lash back, but sluggishly fell before it could like a drugged man attempting to brawl. Its face wasn’t any better, a mess of teeth in weird places, gaping open wounds, strange appendages, and sluggish red eyes all twisted into black and ash and smoke. Sombra pulled a face._

_“Ew,” she whined, because what else should she say about the thing in front of her. “What an ugly piece of shit.” She wondered for a minute what sorry lot in life the Reaper must’ve had, to end up in the pitiful hands of Talon and the mess they’d made of the creature, before she sucked in a breath and steadied herself. Oh well, no use stalling any longer._

_Sombra glanced to the Talon guard and the gun he held, grimaced, and stepped forward. There was only so much antagonizing she could get away with before they choose to screw it and retaliate._

_“Poor bastard,” Sombra murmured as she stepped up to the edge of the table. Those too-many-eyes pinned her, hazed and half-gone somewhere that Sombra couldn’t quite fathom. “You won’t thank me,” she said. Her fingers ghosted along its arm, and the Reaper lit up bright purple as she took complete and utter **control**._

_The first time was ragged and twisted. The Reaper raged beneath her hold, screamed and scratched, and it took all of Sombra to battle its own consciousness back and down and **force it to submit**. She pulled at its memories, at the stored data within the rotted, diseased nanites that twisted and coalesced into its form. She fought it back with cutting ones and zeroes and algorithms that she formed as quick as thought. It was rough and volatile and left Sombra panting and **sick**. It left a long and sharp mental scar across her, a reminder that she’d always bare towards the utter invasion she forced the Reaper under._

**_Nowlet’sseewhoyouare._ **

_Sombra twisted and curled through mental spiderways and sought out the information Talon refused to give her. They called it the Reaper, but how could a creature as horrific as this exist in reality? No, Sombra deigned to dig **deeper**. She flexed her metaphorical fingers and while she tossed out repair code like candy, anti-virus coding, and anything she could to coax the weakened crap that submerged the Reaper, she also dug into the code and into the memories within that code._

**_Itshuman._ **

_A sucked in breath, a twisted little smile of surprised glee at a nugget of truth no one wanted her to know. Sombra giggled._

**_Fascinating_ ** _._

_Violence and anger and hatred were equal in number, enough to leave Sombra burning from it. Sadness, regret, longing, pining, resentment, horror also lashed across her mental approximate and then Sombra found **gold**. Joy, heroics, confidence, **love** , war, violence, fighting and fighting melded together with sex and lust and sorrow; with a fierce hope coupled by betrayal. Omnics shattered apart, twisted into heaps of metal and scrap—a **girl** —_

_Sombra twisted away with a gasp and abruptly cut the connection._

**_Reyes_ ** _, filtered across her mind. **GabrielReyes.Holachiquita.**_

_Sombra sucked in a breath. Her limbs trembled like she ran a marathon and she barely noticed the grasp that steadied her, the touch of the beast that tore a man apart—tore a corpse to shreds and rebuilt a **Frankenstein monster** in its place. Breathing came unsteadily, and she couldn’t hear what had been said to her in the aftermath at first. Instead she stared unseeing at the twisted corpse._

_The twisted corpse of the Reaper that no longer looked to be decaying and falling apart into ink and shadow. In fact he seemed surprisingly put together. Bits of shadow rolled with more coherency, his face had less teeth and eyes and more of a face, and his hand twitched in her direction, eyes **bright**._

_“—boss’ll have your payment and you can go,” the scientist finished up._

_“No.” Sombra didn’t notice she replied until she did, but when her gaze settled on the scientist she held the haughtiest sneer she could manage. “After that hack job you’ve done?”_

_“What?”_

_Sombra smiled, raised her hand, and pointed her finger almost as if she made a gun. “You took a man, and you turned him into a monster,” she said cheerfully. “After what I’ve learned, do you honestly think I’m going to just let you continue to hack him into bits?”_

_Sombra twitched her finger, and in a flash she had her gun in hand, a spray of bullets in the scientists brain, and a second spray through the guard at the door before the bastard could respond. Sombra let the gun go, watched it disintegrate into its base parts, and then into atoms. Then she hopped up on the edge of the sterile table and leaned her elbows onto her knees, and her chin into her palms._

_“I think you and I are going to be **great friends, papi** ,” Sombra drawled, a smile all teeth. The Reaper chuffed a faint, smoky laugh._

_Sombra was permanently hired the next day._

**Author's Note:**

> Scenes are posted up on [my tumblr](http://xadoheandterra.tumblr.com/tagged/fic:%20salt%20and%20sugar) one by one as they are written, then edited and compiled for here. You can check everything out raw on tumblr if you want. Thanks to [hail-to-the-damned](http://hail-to-the-damned.tumblr.com) on helping me fix some spanish slang/sentences that crop up since I don't speak the language. Feel free to call me out on shit, I don't mind, but keep it polite ok? There is no need to be rude.
> 
> Kudos are nice, comments are platinum.
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> Have a suggestion? Want to request something? Hit me up on [my tumblr askbox](http://xadoheandterra.tumblr.com/ask). No, seriously. Please do.


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